By Paulina Schwartz

I. Introduction

The Holocaust is undoubtedly one of the most horrific genocides to have happened in recent human history, and its perpetrators serve as a constant reminder of the human capacity for evil.  The survivors of the Holocaust, on the other hand, serve as emblems of the immense human capacity for resilience and healing.  Among them is Martha Salcudean, who survived horrifying traumas throughout her childhood as a Romanian Jew during the Holocaust, as well as additional traumas living under the communist regime in Romania after the war. Despite all of it, Martha Salcudean was able to build an incredible life and career and was respected and loved by those who knew and worked with her until her recent death in the summer of 2019 (Qu “In Memoriam: Martha Salcudean” 2020). Throughout this paper, I will construct a biographical narrative of Martha Salcudean’s extraordinary life after the Holocaust and will present her story as an illustration of how Holocaust survivors serve as lived examples of the human capacity for resilience and healing.  In order to construct this short biography, I will draw mostly on Salcudean’s memoir, In Search of Light, which she was able to publish just a few months before her death.  I will supplement the memories she shared in her memoir with experiences shared by Salcudean in an interview conducted at UBC, and will also draw additional information from various credible online sources created about Salcudean’s life and career.  In order to provide the necessary historical context, I will also draw on academic sources outlining the history of the Kasztner train, which ultimately allowed for Salcudean and her family’s escape from death in the Nazi concentration camps, as well as the history of communist Romania. 

Following this introduction, the remainder of this paper will be structured into four sections.  Section II will outline Salcudean’s escape to Switzerland with her family, as well as their few years living in Switzerland that followed.  Section III will outline Salcudean’s life in communist Romania, including the difficult beginnings of her career as an engineer and an academic prior to her immigration to Canada.  Section IV will focus on Martha Salcudean’s life in Canada, where she and her family were finally able to find freedom, and where Salcudean created her flourishing career as a renowned academic.  Finally, in section V, I will conclude this paper with an in-depth discussion of how Martha Salcudean’s story illustrates how Holocaust survivors serve as lived examples of the human capacity for resilience and healing.   

II. Escape to Switzerland

In her memoir, Martha Salcudean outlines her family’s fateful escape from the Nazi death camps.  Her family had been some of the almost 1700 who boarded the infamous Kasztner train in 1944, which carried Jewish people throughout Hungary, who were otherwise set to be sent to Auschwitz, to Bergen-Belsen, where they would be sent to their freedom in neutral Switzerland (Gábor Kádár & Zoltán Vági 2009, 310).  This was all thanks to Rezsȍ Kasztner, a Zionist leader who made negotiations with the Nazis (Ibid.).  Thus, due to nothing but luck, Martha Salcudean and her parents were able to escape to Switzerland.  While her family lived in Switzerland, Salcudean was first sent to a boarding school, where she recalls an excellent education under Paulus Geheeb, until her parents wanted her closer to them and she came back to Caux to attend a French school (Salcudean, In Search of Light, 2019).  Of her time living in Switzerland, Salcudean recalls the way in which talking about the traumas they had experienced during the Holocaust was avoided, remembering that “nobody seemed to care about what effects the tragic events we went through had on us” (Salcudean 46).  In her memoir, she recalls the toll this had on her family, but nevertheless remained extremely grateful for her education and to be able to live closer to her parents (49).  This feeling of gratitude for whatever positive things had come her way becomes a recurring theme throughout the remainder of her memoir.  For someone who experienced such immense trauma at such a young age, and who was expected to just bury that trauma afterwards, the fact that Martha Salcudean was able to keep such a positive outlook upon her situation in Switzerland, speaks to her incredible resilience that began early on in her life after the Holocaust. 

Over time, her family’s happiness in Switzerland deteriorated quickly due to the fact that neither of Salcudean’s parents was able to practice medicine in Switzerland, and Salcudean recalls that the feeling of being a “nobody,” without a career or money, weighed heavily on her father (Salcudean 52).  After much debate between her parents, they ultimately decided to move back to Cluj, Romania, where Salcudean and her family had lived before the war and where they felt they had strong enough ties to feel at home.  During their trip back to Romania, Salcudean recalls in her memoir that they had stopped in Salzburg on the way and were late to catch their bus there, and that the thought of being stuck in a German-speaking city resurfaced the trauma of what had happened to her during the Holocaust (53).  She recalls that her father tried to calm her fears, but that she was inconsolable, remembering: “my anxiety ran too deep” (Ibid.).  This memory illustrates the effects of experiencing such immense trauma at a young age, and the depth of the anxiety that Salcudean describes was so consuming that it did not allow her to fully feel the relief of finding freedom during her time in Switzerland.  While her life in Romania would present great hardships on top of her already existing trauma from the Holocaust, the anxiety she describes during her time in neutral and free Switzerland highlights the fact that the effects of the Holocaust on its surviving victims did anything but subside after the end of the war.  And the fact that Salcudean experienced such deep traumas so early on in her life makes her ability to persevere throughout the rest of her life that much more impressive.

III. Life in Communist Romania

In Martha Salcudean’s memoir, she recalls her time living in communist Romania as presenting her with some of the most difficult moments in her life, although she is careful never to compare these hardships with her horrific experiences during the Holocaust.  Upon their initial arrival in Cluj, Salcudean recalls that her father acted as a volunteer doctor for single survivors of the Holocaust who were between fourteen and eighteen years old, and her father was “amazed at their determination to live, alone, with all their losses, with very little support” (Salcudean 55).  It seems, therefore, that the amazing resilience and determination to live despite immeasurable traumas was a common feature of many Holocaust survivors, although of course, every person’s reaction was different and valid in its own way.  This determination to live despite hardship was likely what allowed Martha Salcudean to survive the compounding traumas of living under the communist regime in Romania for many years.

Antisemitism was still very much alive in communist Romania well after the Holocaust, and Romanian society never faced its past with regards to its collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust (Vago 2010).  However, the antisemitism that existed in communist Romanian society and legislation was never discussed, and was instead “buried under Marxist jargon” by placing it in the context of the “fight between the ‘remnants of fascism’ and the progressive forces” (Vago 2010, 493).  One can only imagine the trauma that Romanian Jews experienced having just survived the horrors of the Holocaust, only to be subjected to more systemic antisemitism under a new communist regime that is already predicated on strict mass surveillance.  In her memoir, Martha Salcudean speaks to these hardships that she and her family faced upon their return to Romania, referencing the heartbreak they felt when they realized just how much antisemitism remained active in what they considered their homeland (Salcudean 2019).  Specifically, Salcudean recalls that they had believed that the Soviet Union, and thus perhaps communism, had been an ally in the fight against antisemitism, and that “this belief eventually led to major disappointments”(58).  The disappointment that Salcudean and her family faced regarding how they were treated in Romania after the Holocaust speaks to the unparalleled perseverance that was required of Eastern European Holocaust survivors who returned to their home countries under the communist regime.  This is yet another way in which Martha Salcudean serves as an example of the human capacity for resilience exposed among Holocaust survivors.

Martha Salcudean’s life in Romania worsened after the sudden death of her father, upon which the communist state forced her and her mother to accommodate another family of five in their small two-room apartment (Salcudean 63).  However, despite the tragedy of losing her beloved father and the extreme stress of having to live in such a crowded space, Salcudean was admitted to the university in Cluj to study engineering and remained committed to academic excellence (Salcudean 2019; Caplan, “Leaning in with Martha Salcudean” 2020).  Her commitment to academia proved to be extremely fruitful later in her life and is another example of her incredible determination to live a full life despite the immense tragedies she had faced and despite the fact that she, along with virtually all other surviving Jews in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust, was given no time or space to process that trauma. 

In her memoir, Martha Salcudean makes clear that the thing that helped her get through the extremely difficult times in Romania after the Holocaust were her friendships, and it is her ability to remain so grateful in the face of such hardship that affirms her place as an example of the human capacity for resilience and healing.  Salcudean recalls that during the time after her father’s passing, it was becoming more and more clear that they would eventually have to do whatever they could to get out of Romania, as the situation under the communist regime was worsening and the constant surveillance was palpable (Salcudean 66).  Despite this, throughout her memoir, Salcudean maintains an unimaginable amount of gratitude for the people in her life who helped her to go on throughout those difficult times.  During her time at the university in Cluj, she became very close friends with George Salcudean, and their friendship would ultimately blossom into a romance and a life-long marriage (Salcudean 2019).  About her successful marriage with George, Salcudean asserts that “it is a miracle that we ended up so well together… but we’ve made it despite all the hardships, or sometimes I wonder because of them” (70).  Along with her budding relationship with George, Salcudean also recalls the gratitude she felt for the close friends that she and George shared throughout their time in Romania.  She writes that in the time she spent working in the industry as an engineer, where she was subjected to discrimination based on her sex and social origin, she recalls that the most positive thing in her life was friendship and that “all my life I have valued people and have appreciated a closeness with them… especially when life is harsh” (75).  Salcudean’s ability to see past the insurmountable trauma she had faced not only during the Holocaust, but also for a considerable time after, and her ability to see the true value of friendship in her capacity to persist and heal from that trauma is a true measure of her strength.

When Martha Salcudean was finally able to become a researcher in 1964 at the Institute for Metallurgical Research in Bucharest – where she, her mother, George, and their son Tim had recently moved – it quickly became clear that the Iron Curtain, the invisible divide between communist East and the free and democratic West, would present significant barriers in her career (Salcudean 2019; Keith & Salcudean “Martha Salcudean: UBC Legacy Project Interview” 2013).  From 1967-68, she and George were given passports to travel to Turkey and Western Europe, and it was these trips that solidified their desire to emigrate from Romania and away from the communist regime (85-86).  Though they did eventually manage to emigrate, with help from friends in the West, the process was long and extremely stressful.  In her memoir, Salcudean recalls that during the time in which they were waiting for their emigration papers, “we lived in fear and anxiety” and “the whole thing was extremely traumatic” (100, 102).  This extreme anxiety that she describes, compounding upon her existing traumas from her childhood during the Holocaust, further highlights the amazing capacity for resilience and healing exemplified by Salcudean as she built a fascinating and fulfilling life and career in Canada.

IV. Freedom and a Flourishing Career in Canada

Upon finally being allowed out of Romania, Martha Salcudean and her family first landed in Paris, France before officially immigrating to Canada (Salcudean 2019).  She recalls that, although they were finally truly free, she was in horrible shape mentally, and that “the trauma was so immense that it took a very long time for me to recover from it” (Salcudean 103).  However, life in Canada quickly proved itself to be much kinder and more fruitful for the Salcudeans.  After her son began his studies at McGill University in Montreal, Martha Salcudean managed to acquire her first Canadian job at McGill, until she was finally offered a research position and professorship at the University of Ottawa (Salcudean 2019; Keith & Salcudean “Martha Salcudean: UBC Legacy Project Interview” 2013).  After distinguishing herself as a professor and researcher of mechanical engineering at the University of Ottawa, Martha Salcudean finally decided, after much trepidation about taking on an administrative position, to accept the opportunity to become head of the department of engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC) – becoming the first woman in Canada to ever hold this position (Ibid.).  According to her memoir, Salcudean surprised herself in how much she thrived in this position, and she soon became decorated with multiple awards and medals from the governments of British Columbia and Canada (Salcudean 2019). 

Though her achievements throughout her career speak somewhat for themselves in terms of Salcudean’s incredible determination, it is the attitude she expresses toward her life in Canada that truly highlights her capacity for resilience and healing.  In an interview done for the UBC Legacy Project, Martha Salcudean recalls her initial anxiety about taking the administrative position at UBC as head of the engineering department, and being the only woman in the department at the time, but recalls that, nevertheless, her years in this position were “the happiest years in my professional life” (Keith & Salcudean 5:31).   Throughout her memoir, Salcudean further recounts the many happy memories she has of her time as head of engineering at UBC, stating that it was a position in which “I could fully use my professional experience and my love of people” (Salcudean 2019, 122).  Her gratitude for her experience and the people she met at UBC, along with her ability to fully enjoy her abundant career, are testaments to her strength and resilience.  She also continues to express deep gratitude for her friends throughout her discussion of her time at UBC in her memoir, Despite everything she had gone through as a child during the Holocaust, and everything she had faced living under communism in Romania, Martha Salcudean was able to create an incredibly successful career for herself, and never lost her love of people and her gratitude for friendship.  In this way, she stands as an example of how Holocaust survivors, in their ability to maintain a strong determination to live and enjoy life despite their unimaginable traumas, serve as models of the human capacity for resilience and healing.   

V. Resilience and Healing

In her memoir, Salcudean speaks of her experiences with grief and healing.  Aside from discussing her trauma and resulting anxiety from the Holocaust and her life in Romania, she also discusses the grief she and her family felt when her mother died, and soon after her son Tim’s wife passed away early due to cancer (Salcudean 2019).  Salcudean states, “I have always had trouble healing from grief,” which seems only natural for someone who had to experience so much grief starting at such an early age (Salcudean 138).  It seems that her memoir was an opportunity for Salcudean to process a lot of this grief, as she was able to lay all of her dark memories onto a page and reflect on all of her emotions, including both the negative and the positive.  While she is open about the anxieties she felt throughout her life and her difficulty dealing with the insurmountable grief she had faced, she still reflects on her life with extraordinary positivity.  Toward the end of her memoir, Salcudean asserts that the one thing she looks back on with great pride “is that I managed to maintain my interest and love for people despite observing and experiencing incredible human suffering” (147).  Her positive and reflective last words in her memoir illustrate that, in reflecting on her tumultuous life throughout her memoir, including the horrors she faced during the Holocaust, Salcudean was able to heal as much as one with such trauma can.  She summarizes the core teaching of her memoir beautifully when she recalls a conversation with a survivor of Auschwitz later in her life, which showed her clearly that “human beings have an incredible resilience and ability not just to carry on but to have meaningful lives with great contributions and satisfaction” (146-147).  As I have argued throughout this paper, Martha Salcudean, along with all other survivors of the Holocaust, serves as a lived example of the human capacity for resilience and healing.  May her life always serve as a reminder of this fundamental truth about humanity, and may her memory be a blessing.

Works Cited

Caplan, Richelle Budd. “Leaning In with Martha Salcudean.” Yad Vashem, 2020, www.yadvashem.org/blog/leaning-in-with-martha-salcudean.html.

Kádár, Gábor, and Zoltán Vági. “Kasztner’s Train.” East European Jewish Affairs, vol. 39, no. 2, 2009, pp. 310–14. Crossref, doi:10.1080/13501670903016464.

Keith, Laura & Martha Salcudean. “Martha Salcudean : UBC Legacy Project interview” UBC Legacy Video Collection, 2013, https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubcavfrc/items/1.0167876

Qu, Alan. “Martha Salcudean.” In Memoriam, 19 Feb. 2020, memorial.support.ubc.ca/martha-salcudean/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw38-DBhDpARIsADJ3kjmucGHkPKLtkYoRtYflZCuLOvqhXBOAKfLWF3JozhhEMzsFWRegirkaAjebEALw_wcB.

Salcudean, Martha. In Search of Light (The Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs, 59). The Azrieli Foundation, 2019.

Vago, Raphael. “The Unexpected Cosmopolitans – Romania’s Jewry Facing the Communist System.” European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d’histoire, vol. 17, no. 3, 2010, pp. 491–504. Crossref, doi:10.1080/13507486.2010.481953.